{"id":40434,"date":"2021-03-18T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=40434"},"modified":"2021-03-18T13:08:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T13:08:46","slug":"a-fall-that-keeps-on-falling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2021\/03\/18\/a-fall-that-keeps-on-falling\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fall That Keeps on Falling"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When writing about the uncertain future of contact improvisation during the summer and fall of 2020, in the wake of Nancy Stark Smith\u2019s passing, I noted that one of her most significant contributions to understandings of CI was her theory of \u201cthe gap.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing in a gap,\u201d she wrote, \u201cis like being in a fall before you touch bottom. You\u2019re suspended\u2014in time as well as space\u2014and you don\u2019t really know how long it\u2019ll take to get \u2018back\u2019\u201d (1987:113). It seemed to me then that we were living through a profoundly disorienting gap brought about by the coronavirus. Cases were surging and practices of keeping one\u2019s body distant from others were becoming routine. Although it was unclear how or when the practice of contact improvisation would resume, Smith\u2019s writings provided some solace, reminding readers that \u201cthe gap\u201d offers opportunities for those who seek them. \u201cWhere you are when you don\u2019t know where you are is one of the most precious spots offered by improvisation. It is a place from which more directions are possible than anywhere else\u201d (113).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six months later, in March 2021, a new question emerges: How do we handle an extended gap, a fall that keeps on falling? Although cases are decreasing in the United States, we remain on the edge of a very dark winter with numbers still alarmingly high. Nearly 500,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the United States, with over 2,000,000 deaths globally. Vaccines offer promise, but their rollout has been sluggish, especially where most needed\u2014and Covid death statistics remind us once again of racial inequities. In her recent essay on horizontality and Pope.L\u2019s grueling performance work, Martine Syms acknowledges the off-putting ways in which the term \u201ctired\u201d gets overused: \u201cI try not to say \u2018I\u2019m tired\u2019 the way I try not to say \u2018I\u2019m busy.\u2019 The way I try not to say \u2018I can\u2019t.\u2019 The way I try not to say \u2018L.A.\u2019\u201d (2019:47). And yet, the coronavirus has been raging for over a year now, throwing into relief structural disparities that have shaped lives for generations, and it would be an understatement to say that people are in fact tired<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To maintain that \u201cthe gap,\u201d however extended, is \u201cone of the most precious spots offered by improvisation\u201d is not to suggest that this space is separate from suffering or necessity. The history of jazz teaches us as much. So as improvisers try to figure out their next steps and struggle to choreograph a more just path out of Covid\u2019s isolation, one might do well to remember Miles Davis\u2019s observation that musicians are often more creative at the end of a concert (Sparti 2016:193). This is not to romanticize fatigue. But to recognize the possibilities that can emerge when one\u2019s habitual responses have been exhausted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Danielle Goldman’s article ‘A Radically Unfinished Dance: Contact Improvisation in a Time of Social Distance<\/a>‘ is published in the new issue (65\/1) of TDR and is free to access until the end of April 2021.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Smith, Nancy Stark. 1987. \u201cTaking No for an Answer.\u201d Contact Quarterly 12, 2:113.
Sparti, Davide. 2016. \u201cOn the Edge: A Frame of Analysis for Improvisation.\u201d In The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, vol. 1, eds. George E. Lewis and Banjamin Piekut, 182\u2013200. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Syms, Martine. 2019. \u201cBeing Horizontal: Martine Syms on Times Square Crawl A.K.A. Meditation Square Piece.\u201d In member: Pope.L, 1978-2001, ed. Stuart Comer, 46\u201347. New York: MoMA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When writing about the uncertain future of contact improvisation during the summer and fall of 2020, in the wake of Nancy Stark Smith\u2019s passing, I noted that one of her most significant contributions to understandings of CI was her theory of \u201cthe gap.\u201d \u201cBeing in a gap,\u201d she wrote, \u201cis like being in a fall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":823,"featured_media":40437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[8524,7093,86,5356,8523],"coauthors":[8525],"class_list":["post-40434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","category-music-and-drama","tag-dance","tag-drama","tag-music-2","tag-performance-studies","tag-tdr"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40434"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41114,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40434\/revisions\/41114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40434"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=40434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}